Yahoo on Tuesday announced an agreement to acquire programmatic video advertising platform BrightRoll. The deal -- for $640 million in cash -- will combine Yahoo's desktop and mobile video
advertising inventory with BrightRoll's programmatic video platform and publisher relationships, and will create the largest digital video advertising network. The transaction is expected to close in
Q1 2015.

BrightRoll is a profitable business with net revenue expected to exceed $100 million this year, according to Yahoo, which believes the acquisition will "significantly strengthen
Yahoo’s video advertising platform, making it the largest in the U.S." The platform reaches audiences across desktop, mobile and connected TV.

The acquisition also aims to accelerate
Yahoo’s strategy, which is focused on search, communications, and digital content through growth in mobile, social, native, and video advertising.

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"Video, along with mobile,
social, and native, is driving a surge in digital advertising. Here at Yahoo, video is one of the largest growth opportunities, and BrightRoll is a terrific, strategic and financially compelling
fit for our video advertising business," said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a prepared statement. "As with every acquisition, we have been extremely thoughtful about our approach to the video advertising
space."

Programmatic video advertising in the U.S. will reach only $710 million in 2014 -- up to $3.84 billion or 40% of digital video advertising in 2016, per eMarketer. U.S.
digital video advertising will reach $5.96 billion this year, up 56% compared with 2013. By 2018, that figure should more than double, reaching $12.82 billion.

U.S.
adults spend an average of 55 minutes daily watching digital video content on PCs, tablets and smartphones -- up 25% from the previous year, per eMarketer. Nearly 200 million consumers will watch
videos at least once monthly this year, representing 61% of the population.

BrightRoll served more video ads and reached more consumers in the U.S. in 2014 than any other platform, per
comScore. Tens of thousands of sites and mobile apps send approximately 2 billion requests per day to BrightRoll to monetize the inventory.

"...Yahoo’s strategy, which is focused on search, communications, and digital content through growth in mobile, social, native, and video advertising."

"Focused?" On a list of things that describes almost all activity on the Internet...?

I love a number of yahoo's products...and if only out of sentimental love for one of the web's great pioneers, I keep waiting and hoping to read a Yahoo headline that describes a bold, clear direction, for what Yahoo is or wants to be.

Instead, I keep seeing headlines like this one: Big acquisition, without even an attempt to describe how it fits into some larger plan, other than to say that it will make yahoo "the biggest" video ad platform...that is not a strategy...if anything, getting bigger by glueing together large acquisitions feels desperate...

I am a long time fan of the company...and I thought it was a great, bold choice to hire Mayer...but now I am starting to empathize with Yahoo's activist shareholders...

Does anyone have a case to make for what Yahoo is? what it stands for? what it owns or dominates? or will dominate?

Luke nailed it.Someone needs to have the balls to decide what the role of Yahoo is, then make it happen. As it stands it's like watching an old person buy stuff from SkyMall because they are still alive, have money and have nothing to live for.